The crux of the shirt problem, and what put Phil Zimmerman afoul of the US goverment so many times is a useable crypto implementation. Which is why you couldn't get Browsers with 128 bit crypto for so long.

Basically they don't want the bad guys to be able to hide their secrets. What affect this had on online banking in allied countries I have no idea.

The Blu-ray disc is encrypted, the blu-ray player can decrypt it, but neither one can encrypt original data.

Well, it did lead to South Korea rolling their own system, SEED. Which their banks then implemented entirely in ActiveX. Which meant that every non-IE browser became useless for homebanking, which is one reason why South Korea is pretty much Windows-only.

We all used full encryption with software written by someone not in the US. Not only was the US anal with crytpo exports, but a lot of public key algos are patented (what that you say about patenting math). However these patents were/are US only.

It was pretty funny really. We had 128bit everything in one company, except when connecting to the US offices.

Since when is a Blu-ray or DVD player made in America? I have yet to see at least the major components made by an American manufacturing company. The specification itself is of Japanese origin (Toshiba wrote the original DVD spec), so what is American except for the patents and lawyers involved with the whole thing?

Our company used to buy a certain kind of component from the US to put into the products we make. Every single one needed an export licence and an import licence. That is an export licence from the US and an import licence from the UK. If something goes wrong with the component and it needs fixing, we need an export licence from the UK and an import licence to the US to return it for fixing or replacement. Again, that replacement needs another import/export licence. That's just for traffic between the UK and the US. If you're then going to export your product to a third country, you need another export licence and possibly another import licence for that country too. It's so bad we actually hire people just to track what's going on with all of the difference licences!

To cut a long story short, we switched supplier to a European company who make similar components. Now of course we need an import licence for the US if selling to the US, but in general apart from countries like Iran, we can freely export our product without the nightmare stack of licences and yes, it is a factor you talk about when giving sales presentations.

ITAR covers such things as software, documentation for software and even a software engineer talking to someone about said software, even if what the engineer is saying is freely available in public documentation. I work at a place where we have to review ITAR and EAR (Export Administration Regulations) policies every year and at the end of the presentation they make it clear just about anything could be an ITAR violation.

Where I work we deal with both EAR and ITAR equipment. Since I have been here I have seen a lot of different points of view. Currently, as I understand it, we treat any mechanical or un-programmed electrical hardware as EAR. Unless there are special circumstances (i.e. specific customer requirements).

Electrical hardware doesn't become ITAR unless it has ITAR software/firmware on it. Sub-assembly and top level drawings are EAR unless they call out a piece of hardware that is ITAR. Once a lower level drawing calls out an ITAR item all higher level assembly drawings have to be ITAR as well. While, an ITAR assembly drawing can call out either ITAR or EAR items, an EAR assembly can only call out EAR items in the BOM.

It also affects proposals to NASA that have ANY international collaborators. When sending out various drafts, we have either ITAR-safe or ITAR-unsafe versions because foreign citizens not working in the US are not allowed to even read vague descriptions of hardware, let alone have the hardware. So for the ITAR-safe version, whole sections of the proposal have to be removed for the safety of our foreign collaborators. After all, if you know how to build a [redacted for your safety], you must be a terrorist...

ITAR truly is an ineffective, bureaucratic cluserfuck (as if there's any other kind). Not only does it completely fail at its claimed mission, it really does hamper scientific discovery, internationally cooperative efforts for developing weapons and other technologies, and even local commerce.

submersibles, underwater robots, etc:The Department of State (DoS from here on out) keeps close track of these because they're on a list of "munitions". Any time you want to enter foreign waters/return to the US with one of these, you need the import/export paperwork described above--or else run afoul potential criminal consequences.

Firearms related manufacturing for US-only consumption:Besides claiming to only regulate import/export of various items of military interest, ITAR does in fact also regulate the domestic production of things like bullets, cartridges, propellants and guns, gun parts etc. etc. Manufacturers of such goods currently pay $2200 per year to register with the DoS... Even if the items will never be exported. About the only firearm related thing specifically exempted from the scope of ITAR are shotguns made expressly for sporting purposes.

Yeah, and this has been the case since, oh, 2001? Well, at least it seems that's when it started to be enforced more strictly. I've heard rumblings that the administration was going to change it, but who knows how likely that is.

Hmmm... I wonder if we could correlate the US's drop in space proficiency with when ITAR for space components started?

Yep, yay for the "job security clearance" for providing us with unexportable work opportunities. Like escorting / watching over the shoulders of uncleared contractors while they do the real work:-P Oh, and verifying all the export compliance and foreign visitor paperwork! Fun times to be had by all!

It has a multiplicative effect on the economy... sort of like how bad schools lead to more prisoners which leads to more lucrative prison warden and supply contractor jobs!

No. For the vast majority of ITAR items the US is and will be for the near future the largest customer. Primarily the government by $ value. A US company cannot produce an ITAR item outside the US thinking it can circumvent restrictions. In order to do that you would have to export information from the US on how to make it.

Are there some businesses that are starting up overseas because what they wish to produce may fall under itar? Probably. But dollar value wise that is piddle compared to the job loss th

Let's see, we do about equal shares military and commercial products. Number of foreign nationals local or offshore working on a military program? 0. Number working on a commercial program > 0.
Hopefully the same number twice will satisfy your need for numbers.

ITAR simply means it's not exportable (easily). The primary use/intent is military or national security items. For example, the entire F35, or B1, or Ohio class submarine programs falls under ITAR. Or in cases such as Space (Constellation program for example) it may be because the US gov't has invested heavily in the research and it simply doesn't want to now give it away to foreign nations so they can easily play catchup and not have to invest the billions that the US put into it to get there. Has nothing

I was part of the CubeSAT program at my university. We were designing a 1 foot x 1 foot x 1 foot satellite to be launched. To track the satellite, we needed a GPS module on board. However, due to the ITAR components on the module, the student in charge of software couldn't touch the GPS code or schematics, because he was not a US citizen.

You guys aren't even reading the post. This is a SCHOOL program at a UNIVERSITY. It is not a job. It is not for the military. It is not for a private company. It is purely academic for the benefit of STUDENTS at the UNIVERSITY.

If universities had some kind of blanket exception to ITAR, you can bet that they would fill up with foreign students who would get access to restricted hardware (for "educational" purposes, natch) which would then get "lost" and find its way to Iran. ITAR is probably more restrictive than it needs to be, but I don't think it can be fixed by adding loopholes.

Anyway, you make a good point, I erred by saying 'foreign-born' instead of 'foreign', which is what I meant. Thank you for helping me be clear.

And I also phrased it as an employment issue, which is also what I meant, but I left out another good point, which is that some foreign students are government agents; and both of those are risks being mitigated by the policy. Again, you and I might agree on the conjecture that the policy has more negative exter

... contained how to conform to US export restrictions. The regulations are ludicrous and it is extremely easy to run afoul. E.g. having a foreign visitor glimpsing a concept at a whiteboard can be counted as an export of classified ideas.

I worked in Germany, the US and now Canada for the same employer. I can legally work in all these places. One thing is for sure - if I ever start my own shop it won't be in the US. Any meaningful business has to be global these days and the US is just not as open to th

ITAR has been around for my 10 years in space systems and was around before me. European companies are just using it as an excuse to award European only contracts to kill off American competitors. It's actually been greatly improved in recent years, with a majority of commercial space components being put under the Commerce Dept rather than ITAR.

Brasil is developing a C-130-class military transport with no US technology in it specifically to get around ITAR. Scuttlebutt is that Venezuela is the driver but it wouldn't surprise me if most countries are tired of the US sticking their nose in.

This is perfectly in line with Standard Superpower Policy. The superpower(s) will always strive to maintain and crystallize the status quo. And in the grand quest of doing so they will continually mess shit up while stacking layers of beurocracy on beurocracy until what should be an hourglass shaped hierarchy looks more like a pyramid balancing on its top.

Big fucking suprise things reach a tipping point with such a distribution of mass.

And the reason this screwed-up situation doesn't get fixed, is that whatever politician moves first to try to improve things will get roasted by his opposition for getting troops killed/costing American jobs/betraying us. Bloviating gasbag pundits/celebrities/talk-show hosts will pick up the story, and the public will whip themselves up into a frenzy over the supposed sell-out, because that's what their Guts tell them to do.

If by some chance all political factions come to a sane consensus (some of them rea

And what is that? I mean aside from weapons technology that is? The down side is that it shrinks the market available to US producers. Eventually they are driven out of business when faced by foreign competitors who are free to sell to anyone. Then we (the US) have to buy from these foreign suppliers. So, what's the up side?

It's not really very hard to take a space launch system and turn it into an ICBM system, after all the opposite transition is basically how the space industry got its start int he first place (strap a capsule on the top of an ICBM and give it a bit more oomph to make orbit). Now I think that the argument is over what is and isn't commercially available from other countries without export restrictions, and whether the controls should be the same regardless of who you're selling to (does it really make sense

Which is why our current foreign policy is complete bullshit. Rather than maintaining honest friendships and alliances, we instead seek to keep other countries in the stone age and use diplomacy only when they gain equal technology.

Rather than encouraging the development of technologies, we try to hoard them based on a stupid belief that if we do this we will prevent other countries from developing weapon technologies, instead we cripple ourselves and are a laughingstock in front of other countries.

Think of how much more we as humanity could do when artificial barriers to trade are eliminated. It doesn't make us safer, it alienates us from the rest of the world and prevents us from doing beneficial things. Rather than having an unsustainable foreign policy of making sure that no one else other than the US gets technology, we need to have alliances and diplomatic principles that make it so when countries -do- get advanced technology they won't use it against us.

You really don't have to "think"... all you have to do is go look at the history of the US. With no possible regulations on interstate trade we made a killing in the industrial era... there was of course some growing pains which were more or less resolved, but that's beside the fact.

What you describe I think is also the reason why the USA in particular and the western world in general are so focused on intellectual property protection at the political level. It is based on the notion that the western world has knowledge and ideas that are somehow inaccessible to the rest of the world unless they get it from us, and that we must protect them from leaking out to prevent the rest of the world to catch up and compete with us.

It is also the training and philosophical base that determines the rate of innovation. America has or at least had a general philosophy of freedom of expression that encouraged the development of new ideas and giving you the freedom to create those ideas and freely associate with others to get those ideas made.

China is a much more hierarchial society where the engineers involved only do what they are told and don't come up with original ideas. Doing something original makes you stand out, which also cause

From: http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html [pdfernhout.net] "Nuclear weapons are ironic because they are about using space age systems to fight over oil and land. Why not just use advanced materials as found in nuclear missiles to make renewable energy sources (like windmills or solar panels) to replace oil, or why not use rocketry to move into space by building space habitats for more land? "

The key idea is to rethink security in terms of "intrinsic" security and "mutual" secu

Nuclear weapons are ironic because they are about using space age systems to fight over oil and land

Wrong. Nuclear weapons are ironic because they are nearly useless as weapons. They are actually too powerful to be very useful. And they would render whatever land you wanted to acquire uninhabitable for a very long time. What's the point of land where no humans can live for a hundred years or so. I don't really see them even as much of a deterrent because no modern nation is going to be stupid enough to actually use them. For weapons that have only ever been used a couple of times when they were first inve

"Again, you misunderstand. Having technology that makes your military more effective *does* make you safer, after a fashion. Look back at the interaction between the Spanish conquistadors and the Incas. The conquistadors had metal armor and guns. The Incas had wooden/hide armor, spears and arrows. A single conquistador was a more effective military weapon than a single Incan soldier."

Well, it was guns, *germs*, and steel (see the book with that title). And it was other things as well, like the Inca seeing t

"It's not really very hard to take a space launch system and turn it into an ICBM system"

Rockets are big and obvious. As with the slashdot articles about someone building a cruise missile in their garage, the bigger security problem is how easy it is to make things like UAVs guided by a GPS with enough payload to cause trouble. And making designer plagues in a garage is going to get easier and easier, too. And that is not going to be solved by banning model aircraft or GPSs or biotech or garages, it is goi

It is a mistaken notion that you can use the technology for an ICBM for orbital spaceflight and the other way around. They are not quite the same engineering domain, and from my experience when you try to design a rocket for one domain (building an ICBM) then apply it to orbital flight, the costs involved skyrocket to the point that the rocket is unusable for anybody but a government entity anyway.

It gets even worse for the use of orbital spacecraft being fit into use as a ICBM, as most orbital spacecraft

About 20 years ago I developed what is still the fastest, most robust image registration algorithm there is. It was the first algorithm based on sampled pixels, and predated mutual-information and other similar techniques by about three years.

I developed it for a medical application. When I realized how well it worked, I also realized it was perfectly suited to the terminal phase guidance system of a cruise missile. It ran fast enough on the commodity hardware of the time (33 Mhz 386) that it put it nicely in the price range of your average "credit card terrorist."

So far as I know, the organs of the security-industrial complex are still studiosly ignoring this reality: most technology can be adapted for to build weapons. IEDs and the like are proof of this. Never-the-less, no one suggests that cell phones and digital watches be banned, presumably because the kind of asshole that works in the security-industrial complex isn't about to give up their cell phone and digital watch, or even pay more for them.

All of the items on ITAR have the ability to be part of advanced weapons. That is why they are there. The real problem is not that they are on ITAR, but that ITAR is a nightmare to work with. Look, I believe that our goods should flow fairly freely to UK, Canada, Australia, etc. But the problem is that in the past, a number of companies from other nations have allowed our tech to flow freely to other places. In particular, we saw that with the cold war. Several nations and national corporations that claime

Sometimes the policy is good and sometimes it is bad. Do you really want Iran getting a hold of the blueprints for the shuttles solid rocket boosters? Obviously not, they could be adapted in a matter of months to nefarious purposes. But then there is technology that is by no means cutting edge, in the US or anywhere, that remains on the ITAR restricted lists out of inertia, it doesn't stop enemies from getting a hold of technology, all it does is make US companies less competitive in the global marketplace.

Do you really want Iran getting a hold of the blueprints for the shuttles solid rocket boosters?

Your "logic" makes no sense.

The SRBs are 35 year old tech NOW and one day they will be even more "by no means cutting edge", which you apparently have no problem publishing. Which is a good thing, because information wants to be free: one leak and the genie can never be put back in the bottle.

Everyone knows how to build nuclear weapons today. Anyone who is trying to restrict the spread of technology is pushing water uphill.

So you'd better be prepared to be safe in a world where everyone has every nasty k

Well if you'd read the article, it's from the Institute of Engineering Technology (what Aerospace company is that?) and the article is about electronics components, computer chips made mostly by US based manufacturers.

Now foreign governments are backing competing companies outside the US to source the same type of components in what is a growing market. The first papagraph talks about how many more sats will be launched in the next decade over the previous one.

Since most of the folks mentioned are launching outside the US anyway, no US aerospace company is losing a dime.

In the article they also say the US based components are better, so we have a market that's growing, where US based companies have the best product and people are going somewhere else because of this regulation.

If I owned a big chip company I'd move my HQ outside the US immediately if staying meant I missed out on 10 years of growth.

Do you read the headlines, do you know what growth for businesses in the US is projected to be for the next 10 years, it's not 50% more like sat launches and their electronics components are.

Looks like they make their money from Magazine subscriptions and memberships.

From their website, they are a subsidiary of a registered charity.

IET Services Limited is registered in England Registered Office Savoy Place, London, WC2R 0BL Registration Number 909719IET Services Limited is trading as a subsidiary of the Institution of Engineering and Technology, which is registered as a Charity in England & Wales (no 211014) and Scotland (no SC038698)

Firstly, you clearly don't know how lobbying works: You pay someone who is perceived to be objective to represent your point of view. A research grant comes to mind.

All your arguments are about how companies are losing money... or could potential grow. but you ignore the reason the regulations are there: to verify that no classified technology or weapons get in to the wrong hands.

Unless it makes it on CNN or FOX, I say you're wrong, Football season just started.

As another poster quoted the administration, ITAR treats the M1A1 Abrams tank brake pads as controlled exports even though they are the same brake pads used in firetrucks. Clearly the process needs going over, lots of things that were grandfathered in need to be scrubbed, and common sense applied to what is a weapon and what isn't.

Security theater doesn't make us safer, but a strong economy and industrial base does.

More than that, exporting all those manufacturing jobs to places like China and India has definitely had a negative impact on our security. The Chinese government has no real incentive to cut down on industrial spying on foreign companies producing in China. Hell, they've got a huge incentive to look the other way and cover it up.

ITAR treats the M1A1 Abrams tank brake pads as controlled exports even though they are the same brake pads used in firetrucks.

So? There is virtually no technology that does not have both productive uses and deadweight-loss uses. If you only allow technology export that has no known deadweightloss uses all you will do is encourage the deadweightloss industry outside the US to find such uses. They are likely to call such things "Improvised Explosive Devices" and the like.

I think there's an alternative line of reasoning: if you don't export these technologies to other countries, they will either get it from your competitors or develop it themselves. So your choice is not between whether they have the technology or whether they don't, it's between whether you control their access to the technology or whether you don't.

if you don't export these technologies to other countries, they will either get it from your competitors or develop it themselves

Why are you ignoring the obvious goal of the law, which is that they wouldn't get it at all? We have lots of technology which, by refusing to export it, we have successfully prevented other countries from getting.

But, for simple things like mathematical calculations, I probably agree with you that they will in fact get it. Still, you blithely ignored the hoped-for possibility, which could certainly happen.

We have lots of technology which, by refusing to export it, we have successfully prevented other countries from getting.

Really? I can't think of anything. Nuclear weapons can be had by anyone with sufficient expertise, which isn't hard to develop. Russia did it in just four years. The only reason Iran hasn't is that they get more out of the threat of developing nuclear weapons than actually having them.

I can't think of a single technology that has been kept out of the hands of others by America silly export regulations.

Nukes are an okay example, even though there has been some proliferation amongst our enemies. I would point to things that are even harder to make, like long-range missiles, top-end fighter jets, high-power laser weapons, satellite technology, stealth technology, that sort of stuff.

All of those things have been successfully contained due to a policy of non-export. That's just what I can name, not really knowing very well. I imagine the list is a lot longer to those who are informed.

These technologies have NOT been contained. Some of them were not even developed here. Stealth tech was inspired by a Russian science paper written decades ago. Russia has developed a fifth generation fighter that is every bit as capable as the Raptor, with no help from us.

Ideas cannot be contained as long as people can communicate at all. Technology is built around ideas. What prevents smaller countries or terrorist groups from building high-tech weapons is a lack of resources. All of the items you mention

You can't control access to information(design specs in this case) indefinitely. I like to think of it as probabilities. Once someone figures out how to do something new(build a fission bomb,ICBM, etc). Even if you don't tell anyhow youdid it eventually some one else knowing that it is indeeed probable to accomplish will eventuallyfigure out how you did it.

Once something has gone from improbable to a known working model. Everyone else attempting todo the same thing now knowing it can be done will find the a

from my own experience working for a big tech company, the definitions of what is restricted are antiquated and needlessly broad. technology that was at one time almost exclusively military, is now cheap enough to be applied in numerous other ways. Take "Night vision" for example. IR cameras are now used in a myriad of applications that go way beyond seeing bad guys in the dark: automated food inspection, automotive sensors, etc.

you may find this recent article [arstechnica.com] enlightening. From the article:

The impact of export controls on the high-tech industry have caused problems for everyone from browser makers—who once ran up against restrictions on their encryption software, despite its wide availability outside the US—to hardware makers; Apple once advertised that its G4 processor fell under export control due to outdated definitions of what constituted a supercomputer. But they also affect more mundane items. In the announcement that outlines the reform efforts, the White House notes that the brake pads for the army's M1A1 tank are essentially identical to those used in fire trucks, but only the former ends up under export controls; "Under our current system, we devote the same resources to protecting the brake pad as we do to protecting the M1A1 tank itself."

There are indeed reasons why technology exports are restricted. I just can't think of any, right now.

Past restrictions included banning the Beowulf clustering technology (which caused such an uproar that the code was smuggled into Canada, and ITAR-free alternatives were developed such as MOSIX and Kerrighd) and the banning of crypto in excess of 40 bits (which, combined with RSA patents, led to the International PGP versions, but which had a severe impact on nascent e-Commerce).

During that same time, a New Zealand engineer developed a home-made cruise missile using off-the-shelf parts, a Scottish rocket club built a flying waverider airframe, the Swedish navy were designing stealth ships that were invisible to Radar and nuclear weapons research continued unabated in the Indian subcontinent.

In more recent times, the entire schematics for the Raptor were exported to Iran (where they were published online) because those dealing with actual secrets were not bothering with elementary containment procedures in order to make a fast buck off eBay.

So, yes, I can believe that ITAR has value and importance. What I cannot believe is that the things that get caught in the net are of greater significance than the things that get through. This does not mean removal of ITAR, but it does mean it should be no stronger than the US is willing or able to enforce. Otherwise it hinders allies without hurting threats. ITAR, as it stands, is also open to extreme abuse. In Britain, it is illegal to export anything to any country for the purpose of, or in the knowledge it will be used for, violating international law. Doesn't matter if the recipient is an ally, doesn't matter if the export would have been legal for any other use. Criminal cases along these lines usually don't change behaviour and don't often succeed, but they do generate some measure of accountability that simply doesn't exist in the current ITAR.

And that, ultimately, is the sole purpose of any sort of export control on militarizable technology - preventing it from being abused by the recipient. If it was going to be used sensibly and rationally, what would it matter who it was sent to? It may be entirely reasonable to assume that X is never going to be sensible or rational, but if X is likely to develop the technology soon anyway and is threatening Y who is not, then blocking the technology helps, not hinders, X. Since the US cannot police the world (it has tried!), all of these different factors need to be considered. A law that is absolutely rigid by name and not by any other criteria can never consider such factors.

I don't know what the correct solution would be, that would require considerable analysis in areas I'm not familiar enough with, but it will involve more role-based access controls and fewer fixed lists.

During that same time, a New Zealand engineer developed a home-made cruise missile using off-the-shelf parts, a Scottish rocket club built a flying waverider airframe, the Swedish navy were designing stealth ships that were invisible to Radar and nuclear weapons research continued unabated in the Indian subcontinent.

Wow, to hear you tell the story, I'd say ITAR is doing a great job at driving innovation. I say keep it in place! Of course, I'm not american, either.

One of the reasons I retain my UK citizenship as well as my US citizenship is that I know perfectly well that very few in America can tell the difference. It has harmed US competitiveness (the US slipped down a couple more ranks in world competitiveness in the latest studies).

Oh, and yes, there's no question that ITAR is spurring innovation elsewhere. Adversity in the face of all logic will do that. However, the innovation caused through adversity will be misshapen, distorted by the pressure that causes it.

Nope. Sorry. The big aerospace companies do plenty well by suckling off of the government teat. ULA doesn't bother to sell to non-domestic customers because they know they have a near monopoly on government contracts, and dealing with ITAR is a pain. They don't need ITAR reform nearly as much as tihe small companies, who have to jump through ridiculous hoops for dumb things.

My favorite example is when Bigelow was preparing to launch one of their test habitats aboard a Russian proton. For assembly, they needed a table, so they grabbed some aluminum slabs out of their warehouse and bolted them together. Turns out this particular variety of aluminum falls under ITAR restrictions, so while in Russia, the table made out of scrap aluminum had to be watched by two armed guards at all time.

I'm not a tea-partier, I believe that in many cases good regulations make the market much more robust. However, ITAR is not good regulation. It is out of date, it places undue legal and financial burden on small startups, and partitions our space industry from the rest of the world. If we're not careful, we will become a backwater of mediocrity in the high frontier.

Looks to me like our military fetish and desire to be a world super power is stifling advancements in aerospace. This is an industry where the USA can still compete with the world. We need to cultivate this industry instead of choking it.

two things comes to my mind. one is to make it more dificult for other countries to kickstart their own space programs, even if it's just for research or comercial purposes.

the other, is to keep a few large compnies like boeing and lockheed from having competition inside US. since the expense of keeping track of all those kinds of documents and regulations can be too much for small startups, only the big guys will do it, because they have the resources.

You've never worked with ITAR then. I work for a major Aerospace company who are paranoid about ITAR most of us view it as a chore and the general aim is to limit the ITAR pollution for a project. It does make it a lot harder to develop a product. As far as I can tell best practice seems to involve treating it like UK Top Secret. Things which from other countries would be NATO Restricted suddenly have to be treated as Top Secret if they are from the USA. That's insane.

It is GOOD to have ITAR. It really is needed. The problem is the implementation. That is horrible. In general,it requires licensing on INSTANCES, not classes of items. Basically, it needs to be simplified. Once we grant an ITAR for a class of items, then there should be a simple DB that the foreign company can update with where the instances are. Probably will not happen though. Instead, we will go overboard and try to remove ITAR on many items that should not be.

It is really dumb and it does cost the aerospace companies quite a bit.

The best recent example is the Bell ARH-70 and 417 fiasco. Bell Helicopter was developing the ARH for the US Army as a replacement for the aging Bell OH-58 Kiowa Warrior helicopters. Obviously, since it was a military aircraft, a significant portion of the work was subject to ITAR restriction. Someone then had the bright idea of developing a new civilian helicopter based on ARH: the 417. Now here's the problem: Bell does most of the

Some space technology company lobbying against ITAR as they would've otherwise made more money...

Sorry, I don't buy that.There's a reason for why technology exports are regulated. If that comes at the cost of a bit less money to the aerospace companies then so be it.

However, if it's really a dumb regulation - then it should be rethought. I don't think this is the case though.

More money? At one time America had 100% of the commercial rocket launcher business, and now it is less than 10% of the world market... substantially less if you believe some reports.

This is absolutely killing American commercial rocketry to the point that American rocket builders are only selling to the U.S. military or other government agencies. It is so bad that organizations like NASA are now building foreign rockets to put up payloads, including astronauts. Starting next year, the only way that an A

While this post is incredibly racist and offensive, I happen to agree with the sentiment that the primary role of ITAR is to keep the Muslim nations from obtaining the technology necessary to go into space.

Not that it is working or really effective at doing so anyway. The information about going into space isn't exactly rocket science.... well perhaps it is but it isn't exactly all that difficult. Besides, as is pointed out in the main article the law is hardly stopping "friendly countries" from exporting